1. Field of the Invention
The present invention pertains to weapon systems, more particularly to weapon systems that can penetrate and destroy targets associated with weapons of mass destruction including manufacturing and storage facilities, and most particularly to weapon systems that can penetrate and destroy chemical and biological manufacturing and storage facilities and warhead and weapons storage and bunker facilities without dispersing chemical and biological agents that could result in severe collateral damage.
2. Description of the Related Art
Weapon systems have been designed to effectively destroy myriad types of targets. Most of these systems have been designed with two criteria in mind. First, the weapon system must be able to reach the target. Second, the weapon system must then be able to destroy the target. However, in dealing with targets that contain chemical or biological agents, such as chemical and biological manufacturing and storage facilities, a third criteria must also be addressed. These chemical and biological agents must be destroyed in such a manner to preclude or minimize the release of the chemical and biological agents outside the facility to minimize dispersal of these agents to avoid severe collateral damage.
While many current chemical and biological manufacturing and storage facilities are located above ground, in the future these facilities could well be relocated to buried, fortified locations that are more difficult to reach or may not be reachable by conventional weapons systems due to their deeply buried hardened construction. Many weapon system concepts have been developed to address providing the means to enable a destructive payload to be delivered to these hardened deeply buried targets and other difficult to reach such targets. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,967,666 discloses a warhead that uses a forward hollow charge in order to create a passageway for an internal, follow-up projectile to be fired into fortified or armored targets. U.S. Pat. No. 5,780,766 discloses a similar type of “two-stage” device comprising an armor piercing hollow charge that clears a region or path for the missile to reach its final destination, where upon impact, a post-firing fragmentation explosive charge is released due to inertia. U.S. Pat. No. 5,526,752 discloses a projectile that includes multiple warheads separated by casing with independent detonators wherein the warheads are detonated sequentially in order to penetrate the target. U.S. Pat. No. 5,939,662 discloses a missile warhead comprising a tungsten ballast to provide high warhead cross sectional density to increase pressure upon impact. Finally, U.S. Pat. No. 6,283,036 discloses a variable output warhead comprising several compartments separated by a shock-absorbing shield, each filled with explosive material wherein the shield prevents sympathetic detonation from one compartment to another. Depending upon the target, a specific number of compartments can be selected for initiation.
While these and other designs have provided some success in attacking hardened and deeply buried targets, none of these weapon systems addresses the need to destroy the final target in such a manner to minimize dispersal of chemical and biological agents as noted above. There have been systems designed to safely destroy chemical and biological agents. U.S. Pat. No. 6,011,193 describes a method to destroy chemical weapons by acid digestion. U.S. Pat. No. 6,354,181 describes a method and apparatus to destroy terrorist weapons by detonation of these weapons in a contained environment. However, these and other known methods were developed to destroy chemical and biological agents that are in the users' control and in some type of controlled and contained environment.
Therefore, it is desired to provide a weapon system that can penetrate both surface targets or soft targets and deeply buried hardened targets or hard targets containing chemical and biological agents and destroy these agents in such a manner to minimize dispersal of these agents to avoid severe collateral damage.